As a compliment to the thread about near death experiences I’d really like hearing people’s experiences of losing consciousness under general anesthesia and what’s it like coming back.
Also interested of things anesthetists may have noticed about this during their career.
As my steezy took pains to point out, general anesthesia is not sedation. General means you cannot breathe on your own. Sedation (like with propofol) means you can still breathe, but you have no working memory of what happens.
I’ve had sedation administered a few times in the past few years, two colonoscopies and a bone spur shave on my big toe.
Colonoscopies are fairly quick, maybe 30-45 minutes for the full procedure. There was a burn in my vein in as the injection was administered via IV, followed shortly by a dizziness that wasn’t altogether unpleasant. Next thing I know, I’m waking up in recovery. The dizziness lasted for about 7-10 minutes. Felt about 90% good for the rest of the day, 100% the next.
For the bone spur, I was out for about 2 hours. Experience was similar, except it took quite a bit longer for the propofol dizziness to wear off, maybe 4-5 hours. Not that I was going to drive anywhere with a recently operated toe, but there’s no way I would have tried. After a good night’s sleep, I felt 100% next day.